More than two feet of fresh snow fell on Park City, Utah, this past week, perfectly timed for the throngs of holiday skiers gathering at Park City Mountain, the largest ski resort in the United States. But instead of experiencing a powder high, skiers and snowboarders encountered long lift lines, limited terrain and widespread frustration brought on by a strike by ski patrollers.
“Five minutes of bliss for 50 minutes of waiting in line,” said one Park City skier on Instagram.
The Park City Professional Ski Patrollers Association, representing 204 ski patrollers and mountain safety personnel, went on strike on Dec. 27 against Vail Resorts, which owns Park City Mountain. The ski patrollers are demanding a $2 increase in their hourly base wage, from $21 to $23. The union presented its proposal in September with the goal of coming to an agreement before the ski season, but Vail did not agree, leading the patrollers to strike during the busy holiday period.
Vail Resorts has said that it increased patrollers’ wages by more than 50 percent over the past four seasons.
“We are proud of the significant investments we have made into all of our employees, including patrol, which have far outpaced inflation,” said Bill Rock, president of Vail Resorts Mountain Division, in a statement on Friday.
Without enough patrollers to open trails, respond to accidents and do avalanche mitigation, around one fourth of Park City’s trails are currently open. Normally more than 100 patrollers cover Park City’s 7,300 skiable acres, but the union said that just 30 to 35 patrollers are on the mountain, many of them supervisors or patrollers brought in from other Vail ski areas.
“We deeply regret that this is having any level of impact on the guest experience and are grateful to our thousands of employees who are working hard every day to enable the experience at Park City Mountain and open the terrain that we can safely open,” Mr. Rock said in the statement.
Vail Resorts and the Park City patrol union are negotiating almost daily with a federal mediator. Both sides have hinted that they are making progress, but the union said that Vail “is still far from addressing most of our members’ concerns.”
Vail Resorts bought Park City in 2014 and combined it with a neighboring ski resort called Canyons the following year. The Canyons ski patrol unionized in 2001, and when the two ski patrols merged, Park City patrollers voted to join the union, which is now part of the Communications Workers of America.
Vail Resorts, valued at nearly $10 billion, owns and operates 42 ski areas in North America, Australia and Europe. Last year, Vail sold 2.4 million of its multimountain Epic Pass, which transformed the ski industry by lowering prices and expanding access for skiers when it was introduced in 2008. But the resulting crowds led to customer complaints at some resorts, and overwhelmed some rural communities reliant on the ski industry.
The ski patrollers say they have been buoyed by an outpouring of online and in-person support. An account on GoFundMe currently has more than $200,000 in donations.
“We have had members of the community stopping by our picket line every day letting us know they support us, dropping off food, and donating to our strike fund,” said Margaux Klingensmith, who has been a Park City patroller for six years and is also a business manager for the union.
But this is cold comfort for frustrated skiers who can’t reach the goods. Instead of taking to social media to post videos of flying snowflakes and big jumps, they are sharing scenes of endless lift lines.
“The amount of money spent to not ski is abysmal,” said one vacationer quoted in the local news outlet, TownLift.
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